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Show-Me Cannabis and Missouri NORML will be hosting a statewide conference in downtown Kansas City, on Saturday, November 16th. The one-day conference will include speakers presenting on local and national efforts to create more just and sensible marijuana policies, including a possible Missouri ballot initiative in 2014 or 2016.

Speakers will include Neill Franklin, Executive Director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition; Alison Holcomb, Criminal Justice Director of the ACLU-Washington; Dan Rush, Director of Cannabis Workers Rising of North America of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW); as well as the Show-Me Cannabis board of directors and other local experts.

The conference will take place at EventPort 208 in the Crossroads Arts District, and an evening fundraiser will follow nearby.

Sam Hurd will be sentenced Wednesday for his role in a 2011 drug trafficking operation, and now that he’s meeting the prospect of a life in prison head on, the former Cowboys and Bears receiver is opening up about everything from his role in the process to drug culture in the NFL.

Speaking with The MMQB, Hurd said he spent the last few years of his career — which began in 2006 as an undrafted free agent out of Northern Illinois — smoking high-grade marijuana “all day, every day.”

“Whatever was considered the loudest weed in California — I wanted a notch above that,” Hurd told the site, saying he would import two to 10 pounds at a time from the West Coast. “I had educated myself on different strains and potencies and growing techniques. I was very selective. It was like wine.”

Hurd also said he smoked marijuana and sold it at cost to several friends during his time in Dallas, including “20 to 25” teammates on the Cowboys.

Hurd didn’t mention any players by name, aside from former Cowboys safety Patrick Watkins, but according to his estimate, which he called “conservative,” at least half of the NFL smokes weed during the season and can avoid testing positive for the substance by knowing when the annual sample will be collected.

“Early in his career,” Michael McKnight wrote for The MMQB, “Hurd had been entrusted with a secret known by only a few of Dallas’s veterans: Tests for marijuana occurred at roughly the same time each year.”

PORTLAND — Two days after Portland police said they would “use their discretion” to enforce state law regarding possession of marijuana, the group that spearheaded passage of a new city ordinance legalizing recreational use said they expect police to yield to the will of the people.

On Election Day, more than 67 percent of Portland voters approved of a new city ordinance to legalize possession of up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana in the city. The law will become effective on Dec. 6, 30 days after the vote.

Recreational use of the drug remains illegal under federal and state laws, which Portland Police Chief Michael Sauschuck said “pre-empt local ordinances.”

In a statement Friday, Tom MacMillan, chairman of the Portland Green Independent Committee, which campaigned for the ordinance, said, “The vote on Tuesday was a clear indication that Portland residents want our police force to stop punishing adult marijuana users. The police have the discretion to do so while still enforcing city, state and federal rules for public use, use under 21 and possession over 2.5 ounces. Portland officials must be accountable to the will of the people.”

“It is very encouraging that marijuana possession citations have decreased by 26 percent over a period of a year,” City Councilor David Marshall said in the release. “The voters expect the public and the police to comply with the ordinance when it goes into effect. The election results are a mandate that supports the discretion police are using in regards to adult marijuana possession.”

According to a fact sheet posted last Friday on the city’s website, the new ordinance will not affect the Police Department’s enforcement of state law.

“Officers will continue to use their discretion and judgment in a manner that will ensure that their enforcement authority is exercised in a fair and judicious manner,” the document said.

LANSING (AP) - Five years after Michigan voters legalized marijuana use for medical purposes, lawmakers say it’s time the drug is brought into the fold of the health care industry so patients can buy it at their corner pharmacy.

A bill approved last week by a Senate committee would pave the way for the production and sale of “pharmaceutical-grade” cannabis. The measure essentially would create a second medical pot system in the state, one that proponents say would not interfere with the existing law under which patients can grow their own pot or obtain it from caregivers.

“Marijuana, if it’s to be medical marijuana, should be held to the standard of medical safety, dosage predictability,” said Sen. Roger Kahn, a Saginaw Township Republican and cardiologist. “Our medical marijuana (law) does neither of those. Yet it uses the word the word `medical’ predominantly or prominently in its claims.”

Kahh is sponsoring legislation, now pending on the Senate floor, to move marijuana from a Schedule 1 drug in the same category as heroin and other drugs with no accepted medical use to a Schedule 2 drug like cocaine and morphine that are addictive but also used for medicinal purposes. The reclassification could not occur without federal approval.

Such a reclassification would lay the groundwork for pharmacies to dispense marijuana. The legislation would allow doctors to recommend that patients be issued “enhanced” pharmaceutical-grade cannabis cards differing from those now carried by 129,000 residents.

To get a card, the patient could not have been convicted of a drug offense, would have to surrender his or her ID card issued under the existing law and could not be under 18 years old. Suppliers and participating pharmacies would undergo annual inspections.

In Arizona, getting behind the wheel of a car weeks after smoking marijuana opens up the possibility of being charged with driving under the influence. Soon, however, the state Supreme Court may say that law has to go.

Current legislation on the books in Arizona allows automobile drivers to be charged with DUI if a blood sample indicates the presence of even a trace amount of Carboxy-THC, a secondary metabolite of marijuana. Carboxy-THC can stay in the body for weeks after someone smokes pot, but is non-psychoactive, meaning it can’t actually cause any sort of impairment. Despite scientific prove indicating such, however, a stringent state law in Arizona allows anyone whose smoked marijuana — even one month earlier — to end up behind bars.

Phoenix, Arizona attorney Michael Alarid is currently in the midst of having the state re-consider a 2010 DUI conviction against one of his clients, who he attests was not driving under the influence at the time of the incident but simply had trace amounts of THC in his system. A trial judge eventually threw out the charge, but an Alarid is concerned about a Court of Appeals decision mandating that laws on impaired driving “must be interpreted broadly.”

"The courts are supposed to interpret statutes as to avoid absurd results," Alarid told a local CBS affiliate. "It's possible in Arizona to be convicted of DUI when, in fact, a blood test proves a person is not impaired."

If all works out for Alarid, he’ll win by convincing the state’s top justices to overturn a Court of Appeals decision from the 1990s when “marijuana was a completely illicit substance,” Alarid told the network. Today, however, medical marijuana is legal in Arizona and more than a dozen other states, and recreational use is allowed by law in Washington, Colorado and — due to a decision just this week — shortly Portland, Maine.

When Alarid tried to make his case in court on Tuesday, Chief Justice Rebecca Berch asked a state prosecutor how the law would be utilized if future breakthroughs will allow investigators to discover even more miniscule traces of Carboxy-THC.

“Let’s assume that scientific testing develops and you can find Carboxy-THC remaining in the system for a year, does that have any effect on your position here today?” Chief Justice Berch asked Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Susan Luder. “Let’s now assume that it’s five years that you can test THC levels — Carboxy-THC remaining in the system, does there come a point where the statute lacks a rational basis?”

According to the Arizona Daily Star, Luder argued that Berch’s case wasn’t realistic and that it’s “up to the Legislature to decide” if DUI convictions can be handed down to defendants who may have smoked marijuana weeks earlier.

It's unclear exactly how the vote and new language will actually make a change in how marijuana is enforced, since the drug is still illegal under state and federal law.

Councilwoman Kathie Dunbar had said before the vote that the ballot initiative is a "feel good" spot on the ballot that "means nothing."

"We follow state law in the city of Lansing," she said. "Passage of this is not going to impact anything. It sends a message that maybe the public is more amenable to legalization but it creates a whole host of problems for our police officers."

But attorney Jeffery Hank, chairman for a Coalition for a Safer Lansing which got the marijuana amendment on the ballot, said local police will deal with any marijuana enforcement, not Michigan State Police.